Beyond the Economics Versus Culture Divide: Neoliberal Migration Policy

Previous scholarship on migration policy assumed that economics and culture are categorically separate criteria of migrant selection, often pushing policy in opposite directions, typically expansive on economics yet restrictive on culture. I argue that in a neoliberal order the economics versus culture distinction loses traction. “Neoliberal nationalism” entails a transactional understanding of political community and society, in which economic considerations become predominant across selection criteria. This strongly relativizes and weakens individual rights on the part of migrants, which had been the mark of liberal migration policy. Neoliberal migration policy simultaneously economizes and culturalizes migrant selection. This is obvious and nearly trite with respect to high-skilled labor migration, the type favored in a neoliberal society. But it is also observable, and more problematic, with respect to family and asylum migrations, which previously had been considered as-of-right and now are subjected to (broadly construed) utility considerations.